


Waiting and Better Days

by badgerjaw



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Bath, F/F, Fever Dreams, First person direct address, Hurt/Comfort, Illness, Runaway AU, Sickfic, Sleeptalking, Sleepwalking, implications of an eldritch horror, implications of cults
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:00:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25735435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badgerjaw/pseuds/badgerjaw
Summary: What I say is, “Fuck off, I’m sick.”“For once, I didn’t say anything,” you say.“Yeah, well, sometimes the look on your stupid face does all the talking for your mouth.”Gideon gets sick, and Harrow takes care of her.
Relationships: Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus
Comments: 33
Kudos: 236





	1. Chapter 1

Harrowhark, I don’t know what to tell you. Sometimes those of us in keeping of a body, even ones as awesome and attractive as mine, get walloped with something or other—say, a broken leg or the depression or, horrifyingly, a parasite of such a nature that it defies our lowly human understanding—and we’re down and out for a bit. Sometimes, we’re down and out for a while. Perhaps even forever. It’s the catch of having a body. On the one hand, there’s good food and orgasms—you should try those sometime—and on the other hand there’s shit like drowning and internal hemorrhaging—also things you should try, my atramentous twerp. 

I actually only say about a quarter of that. 

Well, okay, no. What I say is, “Fuck off, I’m sick.” 

“For once, I didn’t say anything,” you say. 

“Yeah, well, sometimes the look on your stupid face does all the talking for your mouth.” 

Said mouth scrunches up weirdly. “If you’ve changed your mind asking me out on a date, you could’ve come up with a better way of weaseling out of it.” 

“You’re a weasel,” I say nonsensically. My brain feels slightly disconnected from everything at that point, like it exists in a place that’s just an inch or so to the left of where it should be. So calling you a weasel felt about right, even though you’re more ferrety. Then I say, like it has anything to do with anything: “What’s the difference between a weasel and a ferret?” 

Suddenly you’re standing over where I’m laying on the couch, instead of across the room, and you fold yourself up around your knees and you’re glowering at me with such force that I get queasy. Before I can even get the desire to hurl under control, you press the back of your hand to my forehead. The skin is cool, which is weird. You run hot. 

“That’s quite a fever, Griddle,” you say. There’s something unfamiliar in your voice and I think you must be mad at me. 

“Did you think I was lying?” I’m still irrationally stuck on how cool your hand felt on my face. It’s rattling something loose in me and there’s this deep want to seize your hand and put your palm against my cheek for a minute. Just a minute. Maybe two. 

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you sick before.” 

“No,” I say. And I say it again because that sounds wrong. “I threw up that one time and got sent home.” 

“I _heard_ about that, but I wasn’t there to see it.” 

I groan. “You’re hanging out with Pal too much.” 

You say nothing to my accusation. Instead, you surprise me. The blanket folded over the back of the couch unfurls in your hands and you fling it over me. It’s an awkward motion. You have to do it a few times before it falls right, but when it does, I watch the plaid fleece settle over me, dazed, and dizzyingly aware of how dazed I am. 

Have you ever felt yourself getting sicker? Most of the time, it sneaks up on me. I’ll have a tickle in my throat in the morning and by the evening I’ll have a full cough and be wondering where the hell it came from. This ain’t that. It set upon me the night before last while you were gone, with all the pressure changes of a storm that had yet to darken the sky, which is why I went off to bed so early, like the spiders leaving their webs. Thought maybe I could head it off at the pass. I woke up worse instead, thunderheads in my brain and the dry baked heat of a fever building in my skin. 

God, I wish I was sweating. 

I realize then that the light coming in through the apartment windows is different than it was before. In front of me, on the coffee table, is an old water bottle, one of the ones with the pullout heads to save from spilling too bad—the sippy cup of water bottles. At its base is a thick ring of collected condensation. I watch a bit of water drip down its side, little by little, before I realize I’m listening to you talking to someone. 

“—yes, I was very careful not to choke her with the ther—“ A pause. “—I know I should have waited until she woke up, but—“ 

Your voice is a soft hiss coming in from another room. Somewhere, water runs with the usual half-drowned _haahgaahgaah_ of the pipes of the building. I give in. I down most of the water left to me in maybe six deep pulls, the cheap plastic crinkling and buckling in my hand. 

“—Yes, Sextus, I’m aware of how to check the temperature of water, _thank you very much_.” 

More so than your footsteps, your shadow announces that you’re moving through the apartment. We’ve both become light-footed since living here, which is a feat, since you were already quite skilled at moving silently. Over the arm of the couch, I watched you clamber up on the kitchen counter to reach the topmost shelf, dimly aware that if you beefed it, we’d be in a whole mess of trouble. But you’re careful. You find whatever it is you need and sink to your knees before dismounting.

Senselessly, I sink into a memory. At least I’m pretty sure it’s a memory. My own fever-heat casts it in brassier lights than that dusty old church ever managed, even when the sun hit the orange- and red-stained glass just so in the spring. It was the last time I was there and I remember your First Communion, you all dressed in white, the world’s grumpiest cupcake without the benefit of sprinkles, kneeling as you accept that holy little wafer. 

_I’ll never kneel like that for anything_ , I had thought at the time. The weight of my brows collapsing into my grimace and the grit of my teeth feels so real for just being a memory. I think the closest I’ve ever gotten to kneeling is squatting. _I’d rather die than kneel_. 

When I open my eyes, you’re kneeling beside me. 

“D’you need a wafer or somethin’?” I ask. 

That gets a snort out of you. You like to hide smiles in the disgusted wrinkle of your nose like that one scrunching up your face right now. I figured it out, because the corners of your eyes pull up just so, only for my jokes. Your true disgusted expression can melt paint off of cars. 

“No,” you reply, “I want to give you a dunk in some lukewarm baptismal font.” 

“That’s not very cash money of you.” 

“Maybe if it helps with the fever, you’ll change your mind,” you say, unaffected by your projected cool status. “Sextus says it should help.” 

“Are you saying you did up a bath for me?” 

“Either to break your fever or drown you in. Victim’s choice.” 

“Shit, Harrow. You’re getting all soft.”

I sit up and immediately regret it. The apartment swims around me, dragging my head down to my knees with a moan that I can’t actually be sure was me, it sounds so strange. I consider the option of drowning for a moment. The only reason I don’t tell you to end it is because I don’t think you’d be strong enough to hold me down at the most crucial part. But then your hands are on my shoulders, firm but bird-like in their perching, and honestly, actually, you could. You’re stronger than me right now and you probably don’t even realize it. 

“Come up slowly, Griddle. I’ve got you.”

“Really?” 

There have been times in our lives when me pushing a ‘really’ would’ve made you hesitate, or you would’ve let your face do the talking, or you would set your jaw and nod once. 

“Really, really,” you say, with feeling, with goddamn tenderness. 

No hesitation, no set jaw and curt nod. Your face is screaming something with the tilt of your brows and the lines of your face and the terrible open softness of your mouth and, god, I must be one foot in the grave. So I stand. You guide me and allow me to slump over you. I trust some of my weight to you and you have no muscles, but somehow you’re as stable as a mountain as you accept it. 

Whatever span of time passed between you holding my shoulders to me slipping, fully clothed in my pajamas, into the bathtub... it felt like eternities, but for you it may have been thirty seconds, a minute max. 

The water feels more cool than lukewarm as I sink in with an unabashed sigh. It feels so good, Harrow. I want to go all the way under, but you still have a hold on my shoulder as you tuck a folded towel behind my head. 

“Thought you said victim’s choice,” I say. 

You let me go to fold a washcloth up and dip it in the water. “I lied.” 

“I should’ve seen it coming.” 

Then you drape the washcloth over my forehead and gently guide a thermometer under my tongue. 

I don’t love the way your expression falls when it beeps and you see the number. 

“If you go any higher, Nav, I’m going to have to drag you to the hospital.” 

I grunt my understanding. As if I had any control over it. 

You continue, turning away from the bath, “We have to get you under—“ 

My hand snags on your trousers. “Stay?” 

You say nothing, letting what you had been saying die in our cramped bathroom. 

After a moment, you shake my fingers loose and I go to protest... only the sight of your bare calf shuts me up right quick. Up rolls each leg of your trousers, just above the knee. I struggle to remember the last time I’ve seen so much of your skin and fail, if only because my brain is now far more disconnected than before. I’m pretty sure there’s been a couple of times where I saw a lot of you and you a lot of me. And I don’t know why I’m surprised you have hairy legs. You don’t concern yourself with extra stuff like that, and god knows we’ve had the same four-pack of razors on the shelf for the past five years, the same I bought when I went shopping to stock our bathroom with toiletries that first time. If we hadn’t abandoned that bag at one of the truck stops, we’d probably still have the ones we left Drearburh with.

Next thing I know, your bare feet are under my knee as you sit yourself on the edge of the bath. Your e-reader balances on your knees ensconced safely in a ziplock bag. 

Ah. 

“Is this okay?” you ask. 

I nod. This is more than okay. This is more than I thought to expect from you, even after everything. You are not a naturally kind woman. It takes you some effort usually. You usually let me handle that sort of thing in your stead and guard my back in the meantime. 

“You said once that no one ever read to you,” you say. 

Nailed me right in the heartmeat with that one, babe. I’m too tired to lash out the way my jabbed heart wants me too, so I just nod and hope you’re going somewhere with that. 

You pick up the ancient e-reader—so old it doesn’t even have a backlight, do you _want_ Sex Pal’s ultra-thick glasses, you monumental nerd?—and you hold it before you as if ready to read off a monologue. 

“What would you like for me to read to you?” you ask, your tone careful and neutral.

I stammer. It takes me a moment to recover and answer: “What are you reading right now? That’s fine.” 

“I’m at a sad part—“ 

“That’s fine,” I say again, and I wonder if you can tell the difference between the flush of fever or one of a more emotional nature. If you can, you’re certainly not going to say so now, I guess. 

You clear your throat, and begin to read with some familiar clarity that put my poor displaced and thundering brain in a storm darkened school room. “ _‘No,’ Jake said. ‘He can’t.’ And when he moved, trying to sit up, his shirt pulled a little tighter against the top half of his body and Roland saw the dreadful concavity of the boy’s chest._ ” 

“The fuck,” I mutter, settling my head heavily on the towel. “S’fine, but the fuck.” 

“Told you,” you say, and you keep reading. 

Like I did with the water, I sink backwards into nonsense again. I don’t dream of school as I was worried I might. I don’t dream of that church again, nor do I dream of the years we spent running from truck stop to truck stop, and I surely don’t dream of less true things. I sleep with a mind still halfway in reality, mostly sensing the water that feels so cool against my skin and in my clothes and the dry fever arguing with it. My senses snag on you here and there. Sometimes, it’s your feet shifting under my legs. Other times, your voice rises up and I catch a string of words that I can’t make sense of before it fades out again. That’s what I try my best to hang onto. I wish I could appreciate you reading to me, Harrow, because it might be the only time you do, and I want it to be more prominent in me than the altar, than the school room, than the narrow space between the seats and the back of the truck’s cab that we’d wedge ourselves into to sleep in those early days of our lives as runaways. I want it so badly. I feel your hand on my forehead, and I want that more. Even the near consciousness you bring me when you gently—ever so gently, sweetheart, where did that come from—slip the end of the thermometer under my tongue again... I’ll take that over the perfect recollection of how you looked the night that everything you had ever tried to love betrayed you. 

A part of me always loved you, but that night was when I knew that what I had was absolutely terminal. Love had fully metastasized in me. We could fight so hard that our hate and hurt drove us apart, but I’ve seen all the wretched whole of you and I know that I’ll be buried with that tumor of love for you still in my heart and my lungs and my bones. You asshole. You sad sack. You pointy, ferrety smartass. You beautiful, genius rock of a person. I’m sorry it took your world breaking for me to accept it, but you finally chose me. You chose leaving with me over staying with your church and your home. 

And somehow, you keep choosing me. 

You breathe a sigh of relief so loud it rouses me a little more than the thermometer leaving my mouth did. Then you thank God, which you haven’t done in almost ten years, and because of that I’m now pretty solidly awake again. Sweat beads at my forehead and the water... well, it’s not warm, but it doesn’t feel cool anymore. 

“It worked,” you say. 

It’s a wonder how a smile can transform someone. 

“I still feel like total shit,” I say. Rasp, more like. I’d drink all the bath water if I wasn’t repulsed by the thought of a room temperature soup made of me. 

All the natural light had gone from the bathroom, replaced with the light of the incandescent bulbs above the mirror, one of them flickering fretfully. I must have said something about it, or you know me well enough, because you say something about it being past midnight. That information goes through me, much like how a brick would go through a soggy paper towel. It exhausts me. 

Somehow, you get me up and out of my wet pajamas and help me towel off, your eyes closed. Stupid, really, all things considered, but I appreciate the thought anyway. Then I sort of tumble into the shirt and boxers you’d hidden cleverly on the counter in plain view. It’s one of my softer shirts. The eyesore you hate because it’s bright mustard yellow, thus offending your delicate goth sensibilities. 

Before I know it, I’m swallowed whole by my bed, which hasn’t felt this comfortable ever in its career of being my bed. The sheets are cool and crisp, still riding the high of being freshly washed. The sippy cup water bottle is on my night stand now. I must have shut my eyes for a minute, because I don’t recall you leaving my side long enough to get it and fill it back up. 

“Tomorrow, your sheets should be changed or washed,” you say stiffly. 

“No duh, genius,” I say. 

“I was going to do it for you, but if you’re going to pull an attitude about it, then you’re clearly feeling well enough to do it yourself.”

“Like hell I’ll trust you with making my bed.” 

You put the back of your hand to my forehead again. It’s hot again. Maybe it’s the light or maybe your face got stuck, but your expression is tender and resting very keenly on me. “Definitely on the mend,” you say. 

“I am sorry though,” I say. “This is a real shit first date.” 

“Don’t worry about it, Gideon.” 

“I’ll worry about what I want.” 

“I’m not upset.” 

It’s not until I’m relaxing further into my pillows at your words that I realize that I’d been tense. I say: “Oh, okay then.” Then: “Any chance I can still get you into bed tonight?” 

“Griddle, don’t be crass.” 

“Aw, a backslide into _Griddle_ , that’s a definite no.” 

You do something weird then; you run your fingers through my hair, ruffling it a bit. My already heavy eyelids slam shut and I lean a little into the touch with an absolutely embarrassing lack of shame. I should really know by now that I’m weak for any affection you deign to show me, but I’m an idiot like that. It always feels too good to be true. 

“I shouldn’t be rewarding that behavior,” you say, sounding tired. “I will stay until you fall asleep, if you really want me to.” 

What can I say? I nod into your palm with as much enthusiasm as I could manage. You have a working pair of eyes. I can’t deny anything you’re no doubt seeing in me right now. Even when you shut the table lamp off, I can see your outline move around my bed and crawl into it, the bed giving the barest wheeze of its springs under your weight. Your thigh presses against my shoulder, no doubt meant to be temporary as you shift to be comfortable, and before you can even think of trying to move away from me, I rearrange myself so I can rest my head in your lap. 

Miraculously, you let me, and with only a tiny bit of halfhearted complaint. That’s encouragement in Harrow-speak. 

Your lap is thin and narrow and incomprehensibly bony. If you were anyone else, I’d say the experience is a bit lackluster, but it’s you, so it’s aggravatingly nice. Your hand is back in my hair—which a girl can really get spoiled with, by the way—with your fingertips stroking my temple. 

I fade quickly from there. 

I dream that you bend over somehow and press your dry, chapped lips to my forehead. 

I dream that they linger for a long time. 

I dream that you stay longer than you meant to. 

Harrowhark, I don’t know what to tell you... but I think your scrawny ass is gonna get sick. RIP. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to corvidlesbian and ri for their encouragement and edit suggestions. Without them, this would have been a mess.


	2. Chapter 2

Sometimes I hate being right.

Look at you. You look like you fell into a pool of standing water in the middle of some haunted forest and the super amoeba that lived in it is taking its sweet time devouring your brain. You look like a vampire on her way to a firing squad of sun rays. You look like someone tried to anthropomorphize the concept of a migraine like a heartless bastard.

I’m saying you look like shit, if it wasn’t clear.

You’ve got a cup of coffee before you, but this one hasn’t been reduced to caffeinated milk as per your usual way of taking it. When your cheek slips back into your hand and your eyes shut in the telltale sign of _I meant to blink but nodded off_ , I remove the mug from your grip, toss the coffee in the sink, and slip it back between your fingers. I know you’ll thank me later. Fuck, we don’t need to have a repeat of that incident we had in Truth or Consequences.

“Harrow,” I say softly, trying not to startle you.

You make a sound that would actually be kinda cute if you weren’t sick.

“Harrow, you should go back to bed.”

“No. I have work,” you say.

“Yeah, no shit, but you’re sick.”

“Am not.”

I sigh. “Open your eyes then, if you can.”

There’s a little bit of a pause. “I can, I just don’t want to,” you say.

“Prove it, coward.”

You lift your head off your hand, and you pry your eyes open a smidge to glare at me. It looks like it hurts you terribly.

“All the way, liar,” I say.

It’s a bit cruel, I know, because I can tell when light is a problem, and the morning light catching on the tears between your lashes tells me exactly what I need to know. But I’m a good sport sometimes. Down go the blinds in the kitchen—I’m very careful about not scraping the chair on the linoleum when I stand—and we’re left in a vaguely bluish half-light.

There’s a pregnant pause while you try and fail to look awake and alert.

“... I’m going,” you say, showcasing your inability to lose gracefully, ever, in your whole damn life.

“Back to bed, I agree.”

“Griddle.” There’s no vitriol or irritation. If anything it’s a plea, like _I’m_ doing this to you and doing it on purpose. Maybe if I’d had the power when I was ten I would’ve, but things have changed since then.

“I will carry you if you don’t get going.”

“My coffee...”

“There’s no coffee in that mug.”

You look in the mug and the look on your face is one of weak concern. I’ll admit, I almost confess to what I’d done since it’s such a pitiful look, but I know I did the right thing. Again, Truth or Consequences. We really can’t have that again, especially when you’re sick.

I leave my cereal to soggify further into mush and go to your side, teasing the mug out of your hand again. It’s a testament to how horrible you feel that you let it go without a fight.

“Do I _need_ to carry you, my sable baroness?”

You look down at the scuffed-to-hell table, and you nod.

One of these days, I’d like to carry you when you’re not compromised, so you can enjoy these arms with all of your faculties and maybe with some scheming in those eyes. I’m not picky, I’ll take your undivided attention any day, and in any way. Regardless, I lift you up out of the chair and carry you back to your room.

Not to sound like a creep, but you even smell sick. We’ve shared a lot of close spaces together over the years, the cramped cab of a twenty-year-old truck not the least of these, so I think I’m something of an expert on the Nonagesimus funk matrix. Like, I can tell you showered because there’s the lingering scent of your shampoo and bar soap on you. I’m not saying you stink. Please understand that. It’s just that what you naturally smell like underneath that is all wrong. It’s off.

You’re also hotter than you usually are. It’s like carrying around a stone or something metal that’s been out in the sun all day. The same terrible baked heat that I suffered through a few days ago.

I set you down in your bed—unmade, of course, because you’re above making your bed—and tuck you in. You look so small in this bed, which is silly because it's a twin. You had a bigger bed up in Drearburh, didn’t you? A four poster queen that used to belong to your grandmother or something. Back before things got real bad for our friendship, I remember hanging sheets and lights from where there were supposed to be drapes, and I’d boost you up on my shoulders to clip everything in place so we could have a fort whenever I’d sleep over. Sometimes it held. Other times I’d pretend to attack the fort, and we’d wage war until your mother would scold us for causing a racket at that time of night. It was always the same complaint too, that we’d wake up your great-aunts, but they always slept like they were practicing for death anyway. Whatever.

What is it about being vulnerable that makes a person look smaller? Especially you, because you’re already so tiny. Though I guess smaller people like you tend to have bigger personalities, so when said personality is knocked out by sickness or being taken down a peg or nine, it’s like seeing through a glamor.

“You. Sleep.” I poke your forehead so you know that I mean it.

“I need to call,” you say.

“Eh, I’ll do it. You just get your evil genius sleep, alright?”

You try and sit back up again. “Don’t let Ruth worry.”

I shove you back down, though it’s really not a shove so much as the merest suggestion of force. “I dunno how to break it to you gently, but people are going to worry about you whether you want them to or not. It’s that free will thing, you feel me?” Then, because I already know what you’re going to say, my hand comes up to cover your mouth on pure instinct. “Shut up. I don’t wanna hear it today. What I wanna hear is you sawing logs.”

Another glare levels itself at me over my hand, and the intention to bite radiates off you in waves. After a moment, you just nod and your head sinks deeper into your pillows until all I can see are tufts of your hair and the dagger edge of your nose sticking out.

Calling your work is simple. In another life, you’re probably some kind of bone doctor, or an abbess, or a military chaplain, or one of those badass warrior nuns, or an initially reluctant fiancée to an emperor’s daughter, or, fuck, a mortician, probably. Any number of things. But in this life where we dropped out of high school to run away, you’re a mechanic at a truck stop thirty miles south off the interstate. One of the ones that we used to frequent back when we were just kids keeping on the move so we wouldn’t be found. So when I call, I end up talking to your boss for a half hour, just catching up and shit. Gives me a real ribbing when I tell her you got it from me, you know. Of course, I’m not the one that made you kiss my forehead like a tacky dweeb, but for your sake I don’t tell her that bit.

By the way, she says to take it easy and to do what I tell you.

Ha! Look at me. I’m the night boss now.

After that, I call Palamedes, because what’s the use of having a genius friend who’s a doctor if you don’t squeeze medical advice out of him? Of course, he sounds very smug over the line. Camilla says distantly, _be nice to the bumpkins_ , and that sounds like something we need to correct when you’re feeling better. He recommends I do what you did with me since that worked so well, complete with a rundown on body temp and water temp and keeping you hydrated.

“Look, I don’t know what her normal temperature is,” I say.

“That’s surprising, given how close you are,” he says. I can almost hear his eyebrows pulling up, his grey eyes wide behind his glasses. There’s a pitch that goes with it. You know what I mean, right?

“We didn’t really get sick on—“

Behind me, from where I’m standing by the kitchen sink, I hear the sound of the front door open and before I even whip around, I know what’s going on. That doesn’t stop the swear from ripping out of me when I hear it close again before I get there.

“Everything alright?” asks Palamedes.

“For now. I’ll call you back later if shit changes.” And I hang up on him. Which is really rude of me, but handling your sleepwalking is more important than being perfectly polite to a friend I can apologize to later.

I hurriedly kick on my shoes and rush out the door after you into the bright morning air. You’re a smudge of black on the street, easy to pick out from the other foot traffic even without being blatantly barefoot and a bit wobbly. I catch up to you and put a hand on your shoulder. Lightly, of course. You’ve never reacted well to anyone trying to wake you up from these episodes, and it’s never stopped them from running their course. So I just follow you along the familiar route and marvel at how different the walk looks during the day, when there are people to stare at us and traffic to consider.

It absolutely doesn’t help when you try and take off your shirt in broad daylight! What are you doing? Are you hot? Is this a different dream from every other time? What the fuck, Harrow! That’s new.

People stare harder at us after that. You’d hate that if you were awake, but if you were awake—now you’re trying to do it again! Harrow! Stop! For fuck’s sake. In any other situation I’d be down to see your tits, but not when you’re sick and sleepwalking your way to a convenience store.

Speaking of which, we’re almost there. It stands halfway up the street, not a stitch of plaid in sight despite declaring itself as a Plaid Pantry.

Back when we were on the road, I didn’t see as much of a pattern to where you walked. The first time it happened, you went into the woods. You walked for what felt like hours to me, but in reality was only a few minutes. It’s hard to gauge accurately when you’re walking in the pitch black after someone, calling their name, freaking out a little with every sound that’s not the two of you. Just a little difficult. Then you stopped in front of a bland looking tree and touched its trunk like you were pushing open a door. You woke up. When you woke up, you screamed. You screamed loud and long like you were being dragged through the back door of hell to be punished for things you did, and then for things you didn’t.

You don’t scream much anymore, but in the time since I’ve figured out the pattern to your walking. I suspected where you were going two years in I think, but it wasn’t until we moved into our apartment that I could match it and be sure.

You’re walking to the church again aren’t you? You’re walking to the basement of the church, where there is a locked door with no handle to speak of. That used to baffle the hell out of us. In our playing and tormenting, we learned that church inside and out, except for what was behind that door. But you’ve never answered my questions. It’s like you hear different questions, or can only give unrelated answers. So all I can do is let you walk. All I can do is let you touch the convenience store door and watch you startle awake.

Like now.

I catch you when you stumble back, and holding you is like clutching a panicking rabbit against me. Your chest is an overworked bellow, your heart rattling around inside like it's been knocked loose, and you make a dying sort of sound—a moan befitting wartime hospitals. Someone inside the store approaches the door and stops, bewilderment clear on his face.

“C’mon, Harrow, let’s get you out of the way,” I say, and lug you off to the side.

“Bit early to be absolutely shitfaced, huh?” he says as he comes through, tone snotty even as he leaves with a case of shitty beer.

“Fuck off or I’ll let her bite you,” I say.

I bet that if you were feeling better you’d snap your teeth for emphasis, but your head lolls against my shoulder as your breathing slows. I glare at the guy as he moves away. Admittedly, I glare at anyone that looks at us—at you—until I feel your hand fist weakly in my shirt and immediately, like a million times before, you have my full attention.

“You good?” I ask.

You shake your head. “Fire,” you mutter. “S’on fire. No smoke.”

“Yeah I didn’t think so. Let’s get you back home then.”

To your credit, you peel yourself from the crook formed by me and the wall and try to stumble back down the way we came. Also to your credit, you slump into me again when I sidle up beside you and throw my arm over your shoulders. You make another death-sound into my tit, which is a shame, because I can't even enjoy the sensation. I mean, look at you.

“God, you’re burning up,” I say. “I think a bath is definitely in order.”

You nod your head. I think you’re just nodding to let me know you’re listening, but when I look down at you, your eyes have rolled back in your head, showing off the broken capillaries in the whites of them. The death-sound this time sounds like the lowing of some hell beast in existential pain and I scoop you up just as your body goes fucking limp.

Fucking hell, I hope we don’t have to go to the hospital.

I carry you back to our apartment and, for lack of a cooler place, I lay you on your side on the cool tile of the kitchen and shove one of the otherwise useless little couch pillows under your head. I know it’s gonna make you sore, but anything to cool you down, alright? Then I set up everything in the bathroom.

Tepid bath water. Check.

Cloth tacked up over the window to keep out sunlight. Check.

Thermometer and water bottle. Check and check.

Change of clothes. Super check. I even change my own clothes so I’m even easier on the eyes than usual, just for you. The bright colors can’t be helping at all. I’m sorry that I keep joking that it’s just that you’re too goth to appreciate them, but I also figure that you appreciate the excuse so you don’t have to be vulnerable. We’ll talk about that later.

I light exactly three candles so there’s some light to see by. Fuck if I bust my toes open in the dark, you know?

When I fetch you, I consider for one wild and wacky moment that maybe it would help if you weren’t in clothes. Drenched clothes are a pain in the ass to deal with after the fact. The wild and wacky moment passes though. I’m not an idiot. Harrowhark Nonagesimus being chill with being naked around another person under any circumstance is just not a thing that exists in the world.

Yet, maybe? Doesn’t matter. It’s not a good line of thought for right now.

You stir in my arms as I lower you gently into the water, which is good. Your breathing is now coming deep and even, and your heart has decided to calm down and go back behind the sternum where it belongs. Your lips are moving though. You must be dreaming again. You don’t always sleepwalk, after all. Most of the time, you’re just a talker. It’s never anything embarrassing like _oh Palamedes take me into your gangly nerd arms and caress me_ , I promise. Sometimes it’s nonsense and I gotta tell you that we can deal with it in the morning—surprising how well that works, if I’m being frank—and you quiet down. Other times it’s a conversation you’re having, that I only get to hear your side of. I recognize some of them, because they’re word for word conversations or arguments you’ve had with me. Interrupting with a nonsense reply is usually enough to, again, quiet you down, because that’s not how it happens.

“Thank you,” you slur in that familiar tone of the sleep-drunk. A pause. “I’m bleeding on your—”

Ah, that conversation. That blisteringly cold night when we left, when the blacks of your clothes had glistened wetly and viscously, when it wasn’t physical pain etched in your face from the weird wounds you bore but the fear, the heartbreak. The night I grabbed my bug out bag and helped you shove clothes and other sparse belongings into one of my duffel bags as the sounds of voices calling for you rose on the wind. The weak lights of Drearburh fading in the rearview mirror as you cried in the passenger seat. _That conversation_.

“Griddle…”

I swallow and tighten my grip around you, thinking of something—anything to say that wasn’t something I said that night. “Don’t worry about going under,” I say, settling for a modifier, “I’ve got you.”

Your brow wrinkles. When you speak again, it’s more clear but not quite enough. “Griddle, I’m sorry.”

“Shh, it’s fine, you’re sick. Just relax and let the water do it’s thing, yeah?” I definitely didn’t say that then. I’m trying not to think about it, but laid out like this, you’re just even more of a mess than I considered you to be yesterday, which is saying something.

When you open your eyes, I’m still supporting your head above the water, because I realized a little too late that I forgot something to soften the edge of the bath for you. Oops.

“Hey, moonshine.” Fucking... forgive me, but _moonshine_? I can do better than that. “I got you. Well, I’m gonna put you down for a second and get you something soft, but after that, I am your creature, plague mistress.” Better.

You nod vaguely and I swear that nothing or no one before or since has ever been set down this gently. I mean in the whole world, not just in the history of Gideon Nav. _I got you_.

A moment later, I tuck a folded towel under your head like you did for me, and you sigh.

When I was sick, I really didn’t appreciate how long we were in that bathroom for. I had the luxury of being able to dip in and out as the sickness willed it and you had to monitor the water and me and read. I can’t stand to be outdone by you. _I’m_ the caring one of the two of us. A part of my unit-specific identity—as Gideon in the package deal of Gideon-and-Harrowhark, Harrowhark-and-Gideon—hinges on this fact. So I kneel by the edge of the tub, thermometer at the ready, trying my best to continue being gentle with you.

You’re just so easily jostled, so easily lifted. There’s nothing to you, in terms of mass. You’re as vicious as a stray cat, but anyone can lift you if they’re willing to deal with infected cuts and your insulted caterwauling. Every touch could be a slight, and—I know, I know, that’s not necessarily a choice you make, I’m not blaming you—I’d rather not make this whole ordeal more stressful than it needs to be for you. Luckily, you seem content to vibe in the water. Even luckier, you grace me with your acquiescence to my humble requests to take your temperature with little to no complaints.

Well, actually, the jury's still out on whether that’s lucky or _absolutely scary_.

At one point, you actually grab my hand and bury your face in my palm. You’d never initiated a touch with me that lasted that long before. You’d never really been the type to go for this kind of touch before either. You’re still burning up.

“We should probably get you to the ER,” I say. I admire my ability to sound so collected, because I’m absolutely losing my shit on the inside.

You shake your head and I feel your mouth on the heel of my palm, all dry and chapped. It’s dangerous how that alone obliterated any sense I had in my head. I keep my hand there long after I check the thermometer. It takes a long time for you to let go of my hand, and even when you do, I press my hand to you still, unwilling to stop.

I only give up because my arm starts to go numb.

“Now, Harrow, I know you like to be contrary, but listen,” I say. God, but my knees hurt and my feet are asleep despite my constant efforts to stave it off. “I’m gonna check your temperature twice more, and if there’s no change, I’ll have no choice but to lug you to the ER.”

The look you give me is so pathetic. I can tell it’s trying to tap into your foreboding well of dark looks, but it’s failing badly, darling.

“Don’t argue with me. I’d rather tag team the hospital billing office later then have to worry about a fucking funeral. Let alone your funeral.”

A sigh and your look softens. ”Fine,” you croak.

I think I’m being quite nice with this ultimatum. I could be hauling you out right now and strapping you into the truck, and you couldn’t do a thing to stop me. Well, nothing that I wouldn’t already be on the way to hospital for anyway. I don’t tell you this. Threats upon your agency are always rightfully answered with the obstinacy that you love so much. You’re so contrary sometimes that I’m certain I could yeet you in a river and be confident that looking for you upstream would be the wiser choice.

Maybe that’d be enough to kick that fever to the curb, right?

So I just talk at you to kill time, trying to think of anything I haven’t told you before. I tell you about the problem customers at my work, the ones who wheedle me for just one more drink despite the house rule, despite their blatent fucking drunkenness, the ones that try and pull fast ones to scam me out of money like they think they’re being slick, the sheer _fucking_ struggle of being unable to bodily remove that one guy I had to call the police on. _I could’ve knocked his lights out_ , I tell you as I take your temperature again, _I could’ve easily suplexed his ass right out the door_. But that complicates any future legal action if he trespasses, because of course it does. I can’t tell if you’re listening to me, but that’s fine; I can just tell you all of this again.

The thermometer beeps a bit dolefully, but to my surprise the reading is a full degree less than the one prior. I say nothing though. I check the water’s temperature to be sure, even though I just replaced some of it.

You tilt your head towards me, clearly staring a hole into the thermometer.

“One more, to be sure,” I said.

I feel your eyes scrape up my body more than I see it. I’m more interested in the moisture on your forehead, wondering if it’s sweat resurfacing from a fever breaking or just moisture from the bath and your wet hair.

So I talk some more. I talk about going into work with you again and chilling at the diner at the truck stop you work at. I’d take up the booth at the window that gives the best view of the garage for the chance to catch you doing some work on sedans and semis. Ribbing you about it is my favorite thing, but there’s just something addictive about watching you, a five foot nothing nerdy goth, talking shop with men and women who look like they were made for the sole purpose of being mechanics. You with a wrench in your hand. You with old murky oil smeared across your cheek. You flanked and backed up when someone didn't trust your judgment or your work.

Despite myself, I very nearly tell you _damn, I’m so weak for you_.

I don’t. Of course. Instead I say, “Fuck, I’d love to see you launch yourself at a big dumb fucker again.”

That gets the tiniest of grins out of you, which makes it all worth it.

Lo and behold, my dreariest of companions, your temperature has dropped another degree and a half the next time I check it. I’m so excited that I wave it triumphantly in your face before realizing that you can't possibly behold the number upon it. My excitement seems to be more than enough to translate it, because you seize my arm with all the strength that still arguably lives within your frame and attempt to drag yourself out of the bath.

“Get me out of here,” you hiss. “Please,” follows, not quite an afterthought. It couples itself to the command with a hard bump, then settles as neatly as the last car on a train.

Well, I can’t deny you a single thing when you demand it so nicely.

I haul you up so you’re standing in the tub—bet you’re thankful for the anti-slip fossil stickers I got for the bath now, huh—and peel you out of your waterlogged clothes. In deference to the precedent you set while I was sick, I carefully look away until the giant shirt I chose settles over your frame. God forbid we confront that one day with the ill advised dip in leech infested waters, huh? Because I remember it. I remember a lot about that day now that I’m not sick as hell.

Your fever might be going down, but you’re still so weak. You pitch forward, face first in my tits while I dry your hair. If you could see my face, you’d probably never ever do that again, so I keep my mouth shut. Perhaps I do go through the motions of drying a little longer than I should though. I don’t know your hair. Just being thorough or something, I don’t know.

“Carry me to my bed,” you mumble into my sternum.

“Too tired to walk, huh?”

There’s a length of time where you don’t answer. But then you raise your arms to drape them around my shoulders like crooked sticks.

“No,” you say. Then: “Please just carry me.”

“If my twilit overlord wills it,” I say, not bothering to hide the fondness I know is in my voice.

I resist the urge to fling you over my shoulder like a sack of rice, and instead carry you like I did this morning. Your forehead rests against my neck, and I can feel the sweat now. Fever definitely broken.

For the second time, I deposit you in your bed.

“Ugh,” I say as I go to pull the blankets over your feet. They’re still quite dirty despite spending so much time in the water. “Sorry, I should’ve given your feet a quick scrub before you got out of the bath.”

“‘S fine,” you say. “I think they’re always dirty after sleepwalking anyway.”

“But usually I can get you into your slippers when you go gallivanting around in your sleep, you know?”

You had been staring up into the ceiling when I said that. In the half-light spilling in from the hallway, I watch the glint of your eyes land on me, your face frozen in some unreadable expression.

“What?”

“Usually I can convince you to put ‘em on before you go out the door, but I was busy talkin’ to Sex Pal so I didn—”

Your breath hitches. “You—slippers…”

“Yeah…” I say, defensiveness rising in my tone unbidden. The logical part of me understands that you’re still very much not feeling well and thus not all there, but I don’t know if I can handle you giving me shit about this.

“You get me in slippers.” The glint in your eyes wobble a bit then slips down your cheeks. It takes me an embarrassing amount of time to realize that those are tears. Your voice catches when you inhale, a choked little sound in the near dark.

Shit.

“Are you okay? Are you in pain?” I ask. I’m on my knees beside you again, my hand back on your forehead and the other going for the light on the table.

“No,” you say, through a hiccup of a sob, “no, I just… I’m only—I love you.”

Harrow. Harrow, holy righteous fuck.

I hope you understand that saying that knocks the legs out from under me. I’m not even sure I even have legs anymore. Deep in my gut, I had known that I’d be the first one to say it, and that it would be unintentional, and that you would go quiet as you retreated back into your head in the corners where all the guilty thoughts live. You wouldn’t say it back, but your actions have always spoken more loudly than your words. After I learned what to look for, I mean. I was content with that projection. I was content with not hearing the words come out of your mouth for ages and ages, if ever. But now you go and just say them, like it’s easy? Because I thought ahead enough to make you shove your feet in slippers usually? _Slippers_?? Harrow, babe.

Okay, no, actually. Knowing your family? Knowing you? I get it. Of course that’s the tipping point. I’m a romantic genius.

With my head screwed at least most of the way back on, I wipe the tears away from your face and forget about turning on the light, so you can keep some semblance of a mask there in the mostly dark.

“You never kneel,” you sob, before I can say my bit. Not to sound like an old timey doctor, but you sound kinda hysterical. “Not for anything. Why are you kneeling for me, you dumb oaf?”

I understand now the urge that made you kiss my forehead that night, if only because I am utterly consumed by the urge to press my lips to your scabby, dried-out ones—which I’d be more confident we could change if you didn’t have the worst lip biting habit. I don’t though. I don’t want to risk getting sick again. I don’t even know if that’s how that works since I’m not a nerd like you, but I hope you understand.

Instead, I lay my head on the mattress close to yours. Your cheeks are warm and wet in my palms. Distantly, it occurs to me that the closeness is only marginally better than just kissing you, what with the shared air and everything.

“Because I love you too, you colossal asshole,” I say.

You grab my wrists, but you don’t shove my hands away. “That’s a bad idea,” you say, between more sobs and sniffles.

“Don’t I know it, but I do,” I say.

“Stay with me?”

Fuck it. If I die, I die.

We part just long enough for me to pull back the sheets and slide in. You’re on me instantly, curled into my chest like you want to crawl in next to my heart. I can’t even object to this. It’s just that, you know, you’re already there. No need to exert yourself too much to get into someplace that’s already yours. Just turn the key and you're in.

I beat the pillow I’ve claimed as my own into a shape I like and once I’m comfortable, I wrap my arms around you. You shudder for a moment, not the way you used to way back when, but you settle in quickly, your legs insinuating themselves between mine. The sobs fade into an occasional hiccup. Eventually the wet spot on my shirt from your tears gets in the general vicinity of dry.

“You feeling any better?” I ask this as quietly as possible, barely a whisper even, just in case you fell asleep.

“I still feel like hot garbage,” comes the answer.

“At least you’re my hot garbage, right?”

The silence stretches out between us, and I can feel your brain working within it.

“I guess I am,” you say eventually.

I could swear I feel you smiling into my chest, Harrow. Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to ri and Myra_Aliquis (Jess This Mess on the Locked Tomb server) for your input and edits to this chapter. Because of y’all this chapter is finally ready for human consumption.
> 
> Also, I forgot to mention this in the prior chapter, but the title comes from Promise What You Will by Iron & Wine.


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